Anzac Day

The Village of Pas, with poppies, The Somme 1918 N.H. Welch.

In all the tiny settlements around New Zealand it is the same. There is usually a hall, or memorial dedicated to those who served and died in far off lands, on the other side of our planet. The lists of names are long, unbelievably long for the size of these tiny places. Sometimes you see several names from the same families, sometimes the dates correspond to those of the great battles, Gallipoli, Ypres, The Somme, Passchendale. Later in another war, Crete, el Alamein, Monte Cassino.
They would be off the farms, raw young boys looking for excitement and a way out of the mud and rain and cows and milking. What they got of course, was more mud, and a brutal fight for survival. The politics and reasoning of the time has faded, the why's unanswered. But as far as they were concerned they were fighting for their families and friends, and the new country they were establishing down under the Southern Cross. We are becoming quite a pacifist little nation now, not easily dragged into foreign wars and adventures. I think they would approve. When as a country, we are criticized for being anti-nuclear, or slow to bang the war drum, we can point to those names. So many names. I'm sure they would approve.